Comp Titles: How to Find and Use Them in a Query

Comp titles (comparable titles) are one to three recently published books that share your book's readers. In a query letter they tell an agent where your book would sit in a bookshop and who would buy it.

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Key takeaways

• A comp is a positioning signal, not a quality claim. It answers "where does this go and who reads it?"
• Agents quoted below ask for books published in roughly the last two to five years. If you use an older title, pair it with a recent one.
• Avoid books with film franchises, decades of bestsellerdom or authors with 20+ bestsellers. Agents Jennifer Laughran and Carlisle Webber both name The Hunger Games among comps to avoid.
• Match your genre and age category exactly. A YA novel needs YA comps (or adult crossovers with teen leads).
• Read every comp you name. Agent Carly Watters is summarized as saying a poor comp is worse than none.
• Phrase comps specifically: what you share with each book (tone, structure, premise, audience), not just two titles and a "meets".

What are comp titles, and why do agents and editors ask for them?

Literary agent Jennifer Laughran describes comps as "usually two or three books LIKE yours" that tell the agent "the tone of your book, where it might go in the bookstore, and who might enjoy it."

Her reason is practical. A shopper in a bookshop sees a section, cover art, jacket copy and blurbs. An agent reading a query sees "a black and white document" with "literally nothing to go on but what you tell me in the query letter."

Comps also travel beyond your query. Laughran notes they "are also useful when agents are submitting to editors." The same shorthand follows your book into acquisitions and sales conversations.

Agent Maria Vicente puts the business case plainly: strong comp titles "show there is a market out there for your manuscript." She also notes what they cannot do: "Your comp titles alone will not sell your manuscript."

So comps are a support act. If you are not sure the whole package is ready, our ready-to-query checklist covers comps alongside the manuscript, synopsis and opening pages.

What rules do agents actually state about comp titles?

The rules below come from agents' and agencies' own published pages. They overlap more than they differ.

Quotes as listed on Maria Vicente's site, the Fuse Literary blog, Writer's Digest, janefriedman.com and Jennifer Laughran's newsletter on 19 October 2026. Agents' preferences vary; always check the individual agent's submission page.

How recent is recent enough?

Two years is the safest target. Five years is the outer edge most agents above will accept.

Vicente's fallback is useful if you are stuck: if an older book is the best match, "make sure at least one of the comp titles in your query letter is a recent publication."

Webber's Fuse Literary post gives three reasons recency matters. It "shows that your book has somewhere to go in the current marketplace", that "you know your place in the market", and it hints at "the kind of author brand you want to build."

How big is too big?

Laughran's test is specific. A "True Phenom" is a book or series that "has had more than a decade of bestsellerdom, has had multiple movies made of it, and is spoken of regularly as a fixture of general pop culture for non-book nerds."

A bestseller can still work. As Watters is summarized on janefriedman.com, "The comp can be a bestseller, but if a book has become ubiquitous, it is too popular to be a comp."

Janet Reid's version is a single question: "Is it a success or a phenomenon? If it's a success, comp it!"

Star Wuerdemann's guest post on janefriedman.com, which collects the Friedman, Watters and Reid guidance above, closes with the example agents keep returning to: "Don't comp The Hunger Games. It's ubiquitous. And too old anyway." (The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, first published 2008.)

Do you have to include comps at all?

Not always. Britt Siess wrote in Writer's Digest that if you "are unsure if you've chosen an appropriate comp title, don't include one in your query letter."

Laughran answers "Are they NECESSARY?" with "Well. Maybe not." In her restaurant analogy, a diner with an unclear menu still won't "run away from the restaurant if what they actually get served turns out to be delicious."

Read each agent's guidelines. If the submission form has a comp field, fill it. If you cannot find an honest comp after real research, a strong pitch without one beats a forced comparison.

How do you find comp titles? A step-by-step method

Budget real time for this. Wuerdemann writes, "It took me two months of diligent work to come up with my comps."

The method below runs from wide to narrow. You collect a long list of 15 to 30 candidates, then cut to the best one to three.

Step 1: Define what you are matching on

Write one line each for your genre and age category, your tone, your structure (single or multiple point of view, timelines), your core premise and your likely reader.

Jane Friedman's advice, as summarized in the same post, is to "Look at aspects of a work that relate to yours: style/voice, themes, plot, or character quality/journey." If you search only for plot twins, you will find nothing and conclude your book has no market.

Step 2: Start with the shelf your book would sit on

Go to a bookshop or library and stand in your section. Note the recent titles face-out and the debuts.

Writer's Digest contributor Debra Eckerling suggests starting "old school": "Go to a bookstore, find the section your book would be shelved in, and see what else is out there." Her advice is written for nonfiction proposals, but the shelf test works for fiction too.

Booksellers and librarians are a resource here. Wuerdemann told librarians "the 'dust jacket' version of my book, along with themes and writers I think I'm similar to."

Step 3: Mine recent best-of, debut and genre lists

Search for "best [your genre] of [year]" for the last two or three years, plus debut round-ups in your category. Wuerdemann "researched the last three years of 'best of' lists" and "debut books of the last three years in my genre."

Category bestseller lists help too, as long as you skip the titles that sit there for years.

Step 4: Use your library's read-alike tools

Many public libraries offer NoveList Plus from EBSCO. EBSCO says its recommendations are "hand-crafted by human experts" and titles are "extensively tagged using story elements such as genres and subgenres, appeal factors like mood and style, character identities, and themes."

That tagging is exactly what comp hunting needs. Wuerdemann calls NoveList "a great place to put in older titles and find more recent ones." So if your instinct is a ten-year-old book, look up its read-alikes and see which recent ones fit.

EBSCO has a library finder to check whether your local library offers it.

Step 5: Follow reader overlap on Goodreads and The StoryGraph

On Goodreads, open a book you suspect is close to yours and check the "Readers also enjoyed" section. Book Riot reports that a Goodreads librarian described it as an algorithm that "analyzes all books shelved by Goodreads members to produce that section."

That makes it a map of reader overlap, which is what a comp is supposed to show. Treat it as a lead list, not an answer: Book Riot's writer tested it by reading 13 suggested books against one favorite.

The StoryGraph describes books by pace and mood. A Penguin Random House author newsletter notes that users can ask for recommendations by "comparable books, moods, pacing, genre, and page count." That helps when your strongest match is tone rather than plot.

Step 6: Check what agents and editors are buying

Agent wish lists and deal announcements show what the trade currently wants and who is acquiring it.

Manuscript Wish List (MSWL) is built around one question for agents and editors: "What do you wish you had in your inbox?" Books they mention in your genre are candidates worth checking.

Publishers Marketplace promises "hundreds of new deal reports every week" on its homepage. Recent deals in your category show what is selling in your lane and which agents sold it.

Step 7: Vet every candidate

Cut your long list with five checks:

On the "published" question, Jane Friedman answered a reader in the comments on the same post: "As long as the title is not self-published, I would not worry much about its popularity, unless it has zero reviews." Her rough benchmark was "dozens of Amazon reviews or ratings, preferably in the three figures if it's been out for more than a year."

On reading, Wuerdemann is blunt: "Please don't comp a book you haven't read. It's bad form, and it may very well not end up being an appropriate comp."

Quotes as listed on janefriedman.com, EBSCO's NoveList blog, Book Riot, Penguin Random House News for Authors, Manuscript Wish List, Publishers Marketplace and Writer's Digest on 19 October 2026.

How do you phrase comp titles in a query letter?

Comps usually sit in the book-details paragraph, after the title, genre and word count. One or two sentences is enough.

Laughran's rule is to be "SPECIFIC": talk about "the SPECIFIC ways in which your title is similar. And also, what sets your book apart!" Vicente adds a useful steer: use comps to explain your book's style or tone rather than its plot, because "no one wants to read something they've read before."

Fill-in sentence patterns

These are hypothetical templates, not real comps. Replace every bracket with your own verified titles.

The audience form, and a variant "[TITLE] evokes the story of ______", are Janet Reid's, as summarized in the janefriedman.com guest post. The "meets", "in the tradition of" and "Like Y, my novel" forms are Carly Watters's, from the same post. The last two rows are our own variations.

A full hypothetical book-details paragraph

Hypothetical example, not a real book: "[YOUR TITLE] is an upmarket mystery complete at 86,000 words. It will appeal to readers who loved the alternating timelines of [COMP 1] and the small-town secrets of [COMP 2], with a narrator who is lying to the reader from page one."

It names the overlap (structure, setting), then the difference. That is what agents mean by specific.

When "X meets Y" works

The mashup works best when the two halves surprise. The Fuse Literary post praises author Cat Winters's blurb for Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics (2015): "Imagine if Stephen King wrote Little House on the Prairie."

The post explains why it worked despite two outliers: "they're so different no one would normally think to compare the two." A predictable mashup of two blockbusters does the opposite.

Laughran makes a related distinction. A film or TV shorthand like "Jane Austen meets Terminator" can sell an elevator pitch, "However, it's not the same thing as a comp title. Comp titles, IMO, should be books." Vicente and Watters are more open to film, TV and other media; Vicente adds that you should "also include one or two books."

Once your paragraph is written, run the whole letter through the free query letter grader. Its instant checks flag a letter with no comps and rate the hook, stakes, voice and clarity.

What are the most common comp title mistakes?

• Comping a phenomenon. Siess wrote that she gets "more queries on a daily basis from authors comparing their works to Harry Potter or Game of Thrones than I can count." Webber names Gone Girl and Twilight among the comps she no longer wants to see.
• Comping a classic as your main comp. The Fuse post explains classics "weren't written for today's marketplace or the wants of today's editors." Laughran allows one classic "in addition to a modern book or two."
• Crossing categories. Webber's example is a YA novel compared to two adult novels.
• Naming popular books that don't fit. Laughran says inaccurate big-name comps make writers "look, at best, like they don't read very much."
• Comping to a book nobody has heard of. Laughran's "TASTEFUL" test asks for "best in class" comps: well reviewed, award winners, bestsellers, cult favorites or "VERY strong debuts."
• Leaning on comps to do the pitch's job. Vicente: "Always assume someone won't know the comp titles and write the best pitch you possibly can."

Are comp titles different for nonfiction and memoir?

Yes. A nonfiction book proposal has a full comparative titles section, not a sentence.

Writing in Writer's Digest, Debra Eckerling recommends "five to seven traditionally published titles in your genre," each listed as "Title by Author(s) (Publisher, Date)" with a short description and a couple of lines on what makes your book different.

She also flags a nonfiction trap: if a title did well 10 or 15 years ago and nothing on the subject has been published since, she calls that "a red flag."

Many agents take memoir queries with a finished manuscript, like a novel, in which case the query-letter patterns above apply. Others want a proposal, so check each agent's guidelines.

Where StoryWith AI fits

StoryWith AI reads the manuscript you wrote. It does not write the book, and it cannot judge the market the way an agent can.

The pitch kit, listed on the Pro plan on our pricing page as of 19 October 2026, drafts a query letter, a blurb, title alternatives and 3 to 5 comp title suggestions from your actual manuscript. It needs a draft of at least 5,000 words.

Treat those suggestions as a long list for Step 7. An AI model can suggest a book that does not exist, attribute it to the wrong author, or pick something too old or too famous. Check every suggestion yourself: real title, real author, publication year, category and scale, and read it before you name it.

If you are not ready for the full kit, the free query letter generator drafts a letter from six answers and leaves a placeholder for comps if you leave that field empty.

Finding comps is reading work: shelves, librarians, read-alike databases and the books themselves. No tool replaces having read your comps, or sees the deals an agent is hearing about this month.

Before you spend weeks on comps, check the pages agents read next. The free manuscript readiness score reads up to about 10,000 words, with no signup.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What are comp titles?

Comp titles (comparable titles) are recently published books that share your book's readers, tone or approach. They tell an agent where your book would be shelved and who would buy it.

How many comp titles should I put in a query letter?

Two or three is the usual guidance; agent Jennifer Laughran describes comps as "usually two or three books LIKE yours." One strong comp beats three weak ones, and some agents say no comp beats a poor one.

How old can a comp title be?

Most agents quoted here prefer books from the last two to five years. If you must use an older title, Jane Friedman's guidance is up to ten years at most, paired with something more contemporary.

Can I use a bestseller as a comp?

A success, yes; a phenomenon, no. Avoid books with film franchises, a decade or more of bestsellerdom, or authors with 20 or more bestsellers. Agents repeatedly name The Hunger Games, Harry Potter and Twilight as comps to skip.

Can I use a movie or TV show as a comp?

Some agents accept film, TV or other media alongside books, and a surprising "X meets Y" can sharpen a pitch. Others, such as Jennifer Laughran, say comp titles should be books. If you use another medium, include at least one book comp too.

Where do I find comp titles?

Start at the shelf where your book would sit, then work through recent best-of and debut lists, NoveList read-alikes, Goodreads, The StoryGraph and agents' wish lists, as in the steps above. Read every candidate before you name it.

Can AI find comp titles for me?

AI can produce a long list of candidates, but it can suggest books that do not exist or that are too old, too famous or in the wrong category. Verify every title, author and year yourself, and read the book before putting it in a query.